Build Diary: 1/60 PG RX-0 Unicorn Gundam (and LED Unit)

Big thanks to Gundam Mad and Japan Craft for OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD

Sorry...calming myself down...breathe...

Bit of backstory. At the start of the year, just before I founded this blog, I set aside some money for a two week holiday in Japan. Of course, lockdown hit and as time went on, it looked less and less likely until I out-and-out cancelled the whole thing. Thankfully I was able to get a refund on the flight, but man...all of that Gunpla I could've been getting my hands on earlier this month.

Well, thankfully I at least managed to set aside enough of the money I would have spent on model kits in Japan to get a kit I was looking to get anyway. My first ever Perfect Grade kit. Well...that and the LED unit as well.

Not gonna lie, the LED unit was actually harder to get than the actual Gundam, seeing how the only places among my usual haunts that had it were Amazon (who I don't have the best track record with as far as Gunpla is concerned) and Japan Craft, who...for as good a store as they are, have a worrying tendency to mark up the prices to cover import costs or something. Like, to a noticeably greater extent than other places I've looked at. They're one of those places you go for if they happen to be the place which has a specific thing you're after, and not necessarily for impulse buys.

I promised myself I'd only start building this kit when I have my hands on the LED unit, since otherwise that would almost certainly necessitate dismantling the kit just to get it in. And uh...certain kits that aren't as pricey as this one have made me wary of doing that.

In any case, let's get the box open. But before we do, I'd like to give you an idea of how big the box is. Here it is in comparison to my A5 cutting mat...

...and here it is in comparison to the box for the MG Dynames.

Yeah. Pretty big. Like, this is one of those boxes that's so big, it needs a handle on the top. Not even the EX-S went that far.

I've looked ahead at the manual for the LED unit and I had a bit of a headache at first. Not only do they assume that you will indeed partially dismantle the kit in order to fit the wiring in, but they really weren't expecting English speakers to get their hands on this kit, it seems. Hopefully Google Lens can give me a decent enough impression of what they want from me, and thankfully there is a part separator tool included with the LED unit. So ok, change of plans, if Bandai is confident enough in people assembling it wholesale first, then I'll do it that way if it means I don't have to constantly flip between manuals. All it really means is that I won't fit the whole Gundam together once all the individual parts are done.

(A FEW MOMENTS LATER)

Oh, never mind! There's some segments outlined in pink in the manual for the actual Gundam that show how to put the LED unit in anyway. Phew! Looks like I won't be disassembling this thing after all!


I made sure to grab 4 AAs before putting in the battery pack. Threading the first cable around was pretty simple stuff as well, it just needs to go over and under a holder on the underside of the base, then out the back where it threads up the vertical stand I just assembled.

Yes, this base is indeed bigger than my cutting mat, once again!



There's also a standing Banagher Links figure as well.





These shoulder joints were really annoying to put together. The join on top slots in really tightly, and you have to make sure everything's on the right way round before getting that hard fit out of the way. I'm lucky I have the part separator to eventually wrench one of them apart, and I still ended up piercing my thumb with my tweezers in the process.












Getting the wires to slot into position was a little annoying, especially the middle three on the back. But I reckon that as long as they're in the right places roughly by the time the whole torso is assembled, it should be alright.

























Can I be honest here? Throughout putting the legs together, I dreaded the moment where I had to get the wires out, because trying to slot these things into the exact arrangement was a royal pain. There's a specific length and tight spaces that they need to fit into at the right length, and I'm honestly concerned that I didn't do it right. Part of me regrets not getting hold of the Perfect Grade Exia with its lighting kit instead - it gives off a much better impression of being designed with the lighting in mind, as opposed to this which feels like it was designed to be a gundam first, then with the lighting added much later in production. The least I can hope for is that the articulation is at least as good as it should be and that it actually lights up in the end.

Deep breaths...

In any case, the size of these things is still pretty cool. I mentioned this in a video over on my Tiktok, but just one of these legs is about as tall as the Master Grade EX-S, and that's only counting the height of the Gundam itself, not how high up it is when on the stand. Yep. Pretty big.





There's some foil stickers that fit on these red waist parts pictured above so that the shiny part faces through the transparent red, which looks quite nice. Wonder what it looks like with the LEDs lit.











Being able to tell which parts go on the left or the right is a little tricky, but if you pay attention to where the wires on both sides begin on the central LED and look at what the manual says, you'll be fine. Tuck them in front so they don't flop around before you attach the waist flaps.

The flaps on the waist unit tend to move outwards on their own thanks to the wires getting bunched up. The manual suggests hooking the wires around some notches near the middle of the waist, but I can't see any grooves for them to fit in like with the leg assembly, so that didn't seem to work. Instead I tucked them out of sight into the uppermost parts of the leg armour. It shouldn't be too bad, posing kits isn't really my usual thing when it comes to completed Gundam models. And as long as it hides the wires as the design intends, all will be good.

I can at least safely say that I plugged in the wires correctly, it lights up as you might expect with a ton of glow coming through even when it's all in Unicorn Mode.

Man, I'm looking forward to when this thing is completed and in Destroy Mode!




















This is the second time I've ever seen an articulated hand pre-assembled on the runner. The first being the Master Grade Origin RX-78-2. These are much more complex, however. I don't at all blame anyone for being unable to clean up the stress marks.








The manual is extremely unclear about how to tuck the wires in once attached to the Gundam. The wiring in the arms themselves is significantly less annoying than in the legs, but right at the end, it drove me completely insane. At least twice thus far, I was really wishing I got something like the Perfect Grade Exia instead. You know, something where the lighting setup makes sense and isn't just awkwardly tucking wires into places they barely fit. But in any case, we've got a pretty important component left to do now, and everyone is telling me that this is a particularly fiddly part. Great.











I haven't taken as many photos of the head assembly as I wanted to, simply because of general stress. The manual is terrible at explaining how to fit some of the parts, particularly with regards to two fins on the head that seem designed to not fit at all, and the top two parts of the head, which are both poorly-explained and hard to attach/keep attached. Simply put, this thing was not fun to build. And the punchline is that the magnetic halves of the horn aren't enough to keep it aligned perfectly in Unicorn Mode. As a model, this thing is looking absolutely beautiful, but as an actual building experience, it's one of those times that I nearly felt put off of the hobby entirely.

At least they had the sense to tell you to remove the back of the head when connecting the head wire to the torso wire. And at least now I know that all the parts I want to see light up are lighting up fine.


Now there's just the backpack and weapons to go.








And with that, everything in the lighting kit is now fully on the Gundam! But before we go through the presumably-grueling task of transforming it, we've got some weapons to make.









Unlike other versions of the beam magnum I've built before, this one gives thet option to separate the individual clips from the magazine. The difference in colour certainly helps as well. They give you enough parts to build two magazines and store one on the back of the waist unit.
















Hi, it's Artemy Musha from the future (April 2021, to be exact), here to tell you this - do not feel discouraged by the shield being hard to pull down if you're trying to transform it into Destroy Mode. I just found out that the X-shaped psychoframe parts actually hold the lower front part of the shield in place, so you want to open those out before pulling down the shield. The manual does say to do it in that order, after all. We cool? Alright, now back to past-me.

And luckily the weapons can be stored in the slots dotted around the stand.




All there is left now is to transform it to Destroy Mode.


...which wasn't as annoying as I thought it would be. It didn't have the cryptic nonsense of the Real Grade where the psycho frame on the knees required me to push it out from behind, but there were a few annoying parts, like these armour plates on the feet that rotated so stiffly I was almost convinced they weren't meant to rotate. Obviously pulling the chest outwards was a little stiff, and the tool on the O runner wasn't as useful for folding out the shoulder vulcans as a simple pair of tweezers was. But now that this thing is showing all the psycho frame it's meant to be showing (bar Unchained Mode), let's see what this thing looks like lit up!


So, after a few hundred pounds and some undeniably stressful moments...that's the Perfect Grade Unicorn. I'm very happy I eventually managed to finish this thing, and I'm ultimately pleased with the results. However, certain elements like the wiring arrangement and the head assembly had me stressed for quite a long while after eventually finishing them. So do I recommend this to casual builders? Well, people often say that Perfect Grades don't take any different skills than any other grade, but I still insist that you need a ton of patience to get this thing together. Even aside from some of the more cryptic moments, there's parts of the manual that simply don't make any sense, and not just because there's far less English in this manual than any other Gundam kit I've built.

The question on my mind, though...is where do I go from a centerpiece like this one?

Well...besides the Perfect Grade Exia, I mean?

Stay safe and keep clipping, folks!


The Good

+ It's massive
+ Lots of detail
+ Some of the best weapons I've seen in a Gundam kit
+ It lights up 

The Bad
- This thing really doesn't feel like it was designed with a lighting kit in mind, so the wiring is really awkward
- Several moments aren't explained well in the manual
- Head assembly is overcomplicated for the sake of a boring-looking (and non-canon) secondary transformation
- The magnet inside the horn doesn't keep the tip fully closed in Unicorn Mode
- Blue LED light leaking out in places makes the light-up psycho frame less than perfect

Build Experience: C

(D if you're building it with the lighting kit)

Completed Kit Rating: A

Comments